The UK Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) has instituted an ‘Excellence in Impact’ awards scheme to celebrate impacts achieved by social scientists from four institutions – the Universities of Reading and Oxford, The Open University and Oxford Brookes University. Projects are rewarded for demonstrating “novel and thriving” ways in which social sciences research makes a difference both in the UK and globally.

At an awards ceremony in St Anne’s College on 19 April OPHI was judged to fall into the Highly Commended category, along with the Refugee Economies Programme of its sister research centre, the Refugee Studies Centre, within the Oxford Department of International Development.

OPHI’s award, which was received by Policy & Outreach Director Adriana Conconi, recognised work with international institutions such as the World Bank and the UN Development Programme on multidimensional poverty measurement methodology in furtherance of the global Sustainable Development Goals.

Agnes Quisumbing, senior research fellow at IFPRI, said “The Pro-WEAI is a new tool that tells us what is happening within the household: Did participation in the project improve women’s control of income or intrahousehold harmony? Did it increase the possibility of domestic violence?”.

Bobbi Gray, research director of the Grameen Foundation, commented: “I believe the use of the Pro-WEAI tools is going to result in more approaches being designed in the future that engage men and women, maybe equally or in equitable ways—even if it’s for the benefit of women’s empowerment. This has been an eye-opening experience, and we look forward to continuing this sort of research in our other projects.”

Validation and testing of the index is still ongoing. The final version of the Pro-WEAI will be informed by the endline data and feedback from stakeholders and project partners.

Since 2010, Bhutan has used a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) alongside consumption poverty to measure and fight poverty in all its forms and dimensions. Bhutan’s National MPI was updated on 2012 and 2017 using the Bhutan Living Standards Survey (BLSS). In 2017, the BLSS questionnaire included questions on disability status. This statistical note shows different ways by which the MPI can be disaggregated using the available information. Each way is implemented, and the results analysed. Thus, by presenting worked out empirical examples, we hope to contribute to the evolving methodological discussions of how best to disaggregate poverty measures including the MPI by disability status. In addition, we hope to contribute to robust and detailed understanding in Bhutan of the relationship between poverty and disability status, hence to inform policies that seek to address both. However, survey data are limited, and so, very importantly, we also advise re-running these results with the 2017 census data for a more precise picture. It is hoped this note will provide some structure for a census-based analysis.

This paper proposes a measure for deprivation in social participation, an important but so far neglected dimension of human well-being. Operationalisation and empirical implementation of the measure are conceptually guided by the capability approach. Essentially, the paper argues that deprivation in social participation can often be convincingly established by drawing on extensive non-participation in customary social activities. In doing so, the present paper synthesizes philosophical considerations, axiomatic research on poverty and deprivation, and previous empirical research on social exclusion and subjective well-being. An application using high-quality survey data for Germany supports the measure’s validity. Specifically, the results suggest, as theoretically expected, that the proposed measure is systematically different from related concepts like material deprivation and income poverty. Moreover, regression techniques reveal deprivation in social participation to reduce life satisfaction substantially, quantitatively similar to unemployment. Finally, questions like preference vs. deprivation, cross-country comparisons, and the measure’s suitability as a social indicator are discussed.

Citation: Suppa, N. (2018): ‘Walls of Glass: Measuring Deprivation in Social Participation’ OPHI Working Paper 117, University of Oxford.

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) are at the core of sustainable development. As we embark on a new round of global goals, namely the Sustainable Development Goals, a top priority is to address a coherent framework for monitoring these services. In the coming years, the sector will witness the development of a variety of multidimensional monitoring measures, albeit from different perspectives. This paper reviews the relevant literature and discusses the adequacy and applicability of one approach that is increasingly adopted for multidimensional poverty measurement at the household level, the Alkire-Foster methodol­ogy. Drawing on this method, we identify and combine a set of direct household-related water and sanitation deprivations that batter a person at the same time. This new multidimensional measure is useful for gaining a better understanding of the context in which WaSH services are delivered. It captures both the incidence and intensity of WaSH poverty, and provides a new tool to support monitoring and reporting. For illustrative purposes, one small town in Mozambique is selected as the initial case study.

Citation: Giné-Garriga, R. and Pérez-Foguet, A. (2018). ‘Measuring sanitation poverty: a multidimen­sional measure to assess delivery of sanitation and hygiene services at the household level’. OPHI Working Paper 116, University of Oxford.

Andhra Pradesh’s Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and Finance Minister Yanamala Rama Krishnudu launched on March 13, 2018 the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Report 2017 for the state, the first of its kind in India. The MPI report was elaborated by the State Planning Department in collaboration with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), based at the University of Oxford, in the UK.

Andhra Pradesh, one of India’s 29 states, is located on the southeastern coast of the country with a population of almost 50 million people.

According to the report, Andhra Pradesh’s MPI identifies 21% of its population as living in multidimensional poverty.

The State-level MPI in Andhra Pradesh uses the same structure as the Global MPI which was co-designed by OPHI and the UNDP. It monitors 10 indicators, such as school attendance, nutrition and safe drinking water, grouped into three dimensions: education, health and standard of living. The indicators are analysed using the Alkire Foster counting approach to multidimensional measurement.

Across countries, India is home to the largest number of MPI poor people in the world. According to the most recent data (2011/12), 41% of people are poor and the MPI value stands at 0.191. Andhra Pradesh’s MPI, in contrast, is 0.0825. The MPI ranges from 0 to 1; 0 being the best and 1 being the worst, and reflects the percentage of possible deprivations that are actually being experienced by poor persons in Andhra Pradesh today. The Andhra Pradesh’s MPI value falls between that of Sao Tome & Principe and Bolivia.

Within the Andhra Pradesh state, East Godavari has the lowest MPI among the districts, with a value of 0.047, while Vizianagaram has the highest, with a value of 0.127.

The multidimensional poverty headcount ratio of the State, which gives the proportion of people living in multidimensional poverty, fell from 41.6% in 2005-06 to 21% in 2016-17. The rural headcount ratio stands at 22% while for urban areas it is 19%.

By conducting this study, Andhra Pradesh has become the first state in the country to perform a household survey exclusively to estimate MPI at state and district levels, disaggregated by social categories and urban-rural areas. The end-to-end process, including sampling, data processing & analysis and estimation of headcount and Index values, was conducted with OPHI’s technical support.

Dr. Christian Oldiges, Research Officer from OPHI, was present at the launch. “OPHI has been in communication with the very motivated team in Andhra Pradesh since the start of this project. We are impressed by their innovation and dedication”, said Dr. Oldiges. “Our hope is that the MPI will be used to energise state-level policies and accelerate Andhra Pradesh’s progress in meeting many Sustainable Development Goals, and thus reducing poverty in all its forms and dimensions.”

The MPI development project was led by Alen John (Senior Associate), Bhaskar Somayaji (Consultant) and Soumya Guha (Associate) under the supervision and guidance of Prathima Reddy, Director at the Vision Management Unit, AP State Development Planning Society, Planning Department.

This paper considers the measurement properties of indices used to measure multidimensional child poverty in the developing world. Two indices are considered in detail: the Alkire Foster method (Alkire & Foster 2010) and the ‘categorical counting’ method as exemplified by UNICEF poverty indices based on methodologies by Gordon et al. (2003) and De Neubourg et al. (2013). This analysis examines the underlying differences between the two methodologies in two stages. First, using hypothetical data we consider the differences in measurement properties that arise from the axiomatic construction of indices using a laboratory approach. Second, we use harmonized Demographic and Health Surveys data from three countries to examine how the properties found in the laboratory data lead to actual differences in the measurement of the prevalence of multidimensional poverty within and across countries, and the ability of indices to monitor changes in the prevalence of multidimensional poverty. The paper concludes by considering the findings from the analysis and how they could be taken forward in future measurements of poverty prevalence and reduction in Sustainable Development Goals targets and indicators.

The measurement of inequality from a human development perspective is fundamental. We start this paper by briefly introducing the human development approach and its main conceptual basis: the capability approach. We note that inequality should preferably be assessed in the space of functionings, requiring the assessment methods to use multidimensional techniques. We then present the primary challenges inherent to multidimensional inequality measurement that are related to two types of distributional changes: one is concerned with the dispersions within distributions that are analogous to the unidimensional framework and the other, unlike the unidimensional framework, is concerned with the association between distributions. We next present a succinct review of the most prominent measures proposed in the literature within a unifying framework and review the empirical applications surrounding these measures. We note that while multidimensional inequality measures have a great potential to contribute to the monitoring of human development, there are some challenges to overcome in order to fulfil this potential.